I'm cured!

For those of you interested in my bursitis saga, I am happy to announce that the OT department has discharged me from their care! I have a doctor's appointment on Friday to clear me from further treatment but I anticipate passing that with flying colors. They really have done wonderous things to help cure the pain and I plan on singing the praises of OTs at every chance I get!

Serving up some drywall

This weekend more work was completed on the kitchen. I have to say, I have not helped less on a project in my own house! We have so many people who have given their time to help and we would definitely not be in the state we are in without them.

Dad, Frank and Dennis all arrived early on Saturday. Dad finished up some electrical work (on Thursday the electrician was here to set up all the switches and sockets, Dad "just" had to prep the boxes for the ceiling fan and pendant light we are installing, a project which turned out to be frustrating b/c the kits for such a job are not made for ceiling joists in 100 year old houses) and Kevin insulated the rest of the exterior wall, which was missing a few panels of insulation. In previous projects we learned that our house was inhabited at one point by a man we now refer to as "Cheap Mike," (we once ripped down a wall to read "Mike is cheap" on the wall behind it) and we now blame him for all odd and inconvenient occurrences such as only half of a wall being insulated.

After that, the boys started putting up drywall only to discover that Dad's three drywall saws were all missing from his truck. This was my big achievement of the day - going to Home Depot to replace the saws! I also exerted myself later to get lunch and swept multiple piles of gypsum dust up (you can see it speckling some of the pictures below). Anyhoo, many sheets of drywall were expertly cut and fitted to the walls and ceiling. Dad even had enough momentum to put on a first coat of spackle, which Kevin assisted with.

Afterward, my cousin Meg and Uncle Steve came down to check on our progress, as well as my parent's friend Mary Ellen and we all went out to dinner at Desimone's, which is a very colorful local joint a block up and over from our place. It's like eating in someone's living room (which has a bar, of course). That's the story for now - we are hoping for more spackle this week, as well as a new window, so that Kevin and I can paint this coming weekend and be ready for cabinets the weekend after that! Stay tuned!

Frank pulls down the old doorway trim (which was previously the door to the house at one point) and almost pulls down the house with it!

Jack does her duty sweeping up - that granite was the doorstep on the original house

Kevin installing insulation like a pro

Drywalling the soffit

Dad cutting out holes for the sockets and switches with a fancy electric rotary cutter

Screwing in another piece

Time for tape and mud

Frank waits for the final piece from Den the cut man

Giggles

This is what Kevin calls me when I start laughing about something - generally, it makes me laugh harder.

Tonight, in our effort to find new food around us (since we are sans kitchen), we had dinner at Boston Market in Norristown. We never go there, but we will add it to our repertoire from now on since we were reminded of how much we like it.

The giggles came when Kevin was dumping our tray in the trash. As he did so, his gloves fell on the floor and I leaned over to pick them up, almost taking a stray cup in the eye. I made a comment like, "whoa, that was almost an eyecup," which reminded me of something my dad told us when we were younger, a silly joke that kids play on each other.

"How do you spell icup?"
"I-C-U-P"
(hilarious giggling, red faces and mouth covering ensues)

So I said to Kevin - "hey, spell that!" To which he replied, "What?" I started laughing to myself, and aloud, repeating "Spell it!" as I jumped around in the restaurant and parking lot on the way out to the car. At some point, he caught on to the joke, also remembering it from his youth, and said something like, "I haven't heard that since I was 12!" which made me laugh even harder.

This transcended the "Giggles" nickname - I was short of breath, tears streaming down my face, hysterical laughing. I could not stop. My stomach was cramping up and I was making little squealing noises with my mouth closed. It was not a pretty sight, but it sure felt good. Whew.

And for my next trick..."Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"

What's in the box?

Today I was listening to the radio on my way to PT and was reminded by the dj that Prince Charles and Camilla are in Philadelphia this weekend. He wondered how the royals would deal with the chilly weather we have had this week. His exact comment was, "This is cold for us, but I wonder how they're going to deal with it," implying that they would not be able to tolerate the sharp sting in the air, given that they come from TROPICAL ENGLAND.

Seriously? Does this guy not know where the country is located? I mean, they are having an unseasonably warmer than usual winter in the UK, I'll give him that, but we're talking about a country that is not that far from ours, nor is it located that differently in a distance-from-the-equator type of way. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think this guy's concern is undue.

BUT, speaking of the radio, and speaking of music, I was introduced to a very cool thing today that you should be concerned about. Not concerned - interested. Check out Pandora Internet Radio. Created by Tim Westergren and the team at the Music Genome Project, which attempts, as the page explains, to create the most comprehensive analysis of music ever. By breaking music down into "genes," they allow you to find the types of music you enjoy because you are able to compare and contrast due to the fact that you now have the comparable terms to use. It's like rating something that you can't get your hands around - which cloud is prettier than another? It's seems subjective - unless you set parameters for "prettiness" like cloud size, number of rounded edges, density, etc. Then you can rate it and compare it. I feel like that's what they've done here.

At the Pandora site, you can type in an artist you enjoy, and the site will not only play that music for you, but also other comparable artists. For instance, on my Norah Jones Station, it has introduced me to Nina Nastasia. As you can see by clicking on the link, it gives you a sample, lists key features of the song that is playing (i.e., acoustic rock instrumentation, acoustic rhythm piano, acoustic sonority, major key tonality, acoustic rhythm guitars) and lists more similar songs.

You can listen for free by creating an account - you can also test it out before you do that. In addition, you can listen for $3 a month without the ads that accompany the free account. For people like me, who not only have no radio reception at work, but also don't really have a venue to learn about new music, it's a great service. Enjoy!

What's hot in the kitchen?

So here's the progress on our kitchen project! We started last weekend. After clearing out the cabinets (and finding things I didn't know we had) and moving all our wares into the living room and our laundry room-turned-kitchen, Dad and Kevin started ripping down the old cabinets and countertops. After that, down came this old wallboard that Dad told us they used to sell pre-wallpapered. Wow - I can't understand why that fad didn't last.

We always seem to find something interesting in these projects. This time we hit on a letter from a law office about a suit and 10 steps to doing CPR.

After some planning about electric, heat and layout, Dad, Dennis and Kevin got cracking on building soffits and prepping a wall for drywall. Dad and Frank were here on Tuesday night and when I got home from PT, they had already finished the soffit, installed the first parts of the recessed lighting and vented the stove hood. WOW!! I mostly did the unskilled labor such as sweeping, carrying and piling trash. Hey, it's not glamorous, but someone has to do it!

We are moving on at a fast clip and are planning on starting drywall this weekend. Wish us luck!

Tired of running the marathon

My dad is a marathon runner, but the only kind of marathon I've participated in is school. After 13 years of mandatory schooling (including kindergarten; I didn't repeat!), 4 years of college and so far 2 years of grad school, I am ready to be DONE!

I start class tonight and just really do not want to head to campus again. It reminds me of a joke I heard long ago about a marathon runner who had one mile to go and was too tired to continue - so he turned around and ran back to the start. Obviously, it is ridiculous and makes much more sense to just finish that mile, but my heart goes out to the fictitious little harrier. I feel your pain, my man!!

Passive not active

Just wanted to put out an update on my family and the funeral today. Thanks to everyone for your concern and thoughtful cards, flowers and e-mails.

Today was the funeral, which was not as bad as I expected. Since my entire family has been together pretty much every day since Friday, we've all kind of cried it out already. By this point, we all knew what we had to do today and were just working to get through it. The upsetting thing was seeing so many people who had come to say goodbye to Gram who were just being upset for the first time.

I was proud of myself that I held it together pretty well. I teared up when my co-workers came through the receiving line, partially because Julie, my co-worker with personal space issues, was not only tearing up herself, but also hugged me. Love ya, Jul! I also got through pretty much the entire eulogy before I teared up. I tried to take a deep breath to compose myself so I could move on, but that didn't really work so I just blew through the last few lines and tried to make myself as intelligible as possible.

After the cemetery, complete with bagpiper playing "Amazing Grace," (which was the hardest part) we had lunch at the Radnor Hotel, which is a very smart establishment and what Gram wanted. My Pop seemed to be hanging in there pretty well, though we were all tired by the time Kevin and I left at 3 p.m.

Now I am just dealing with the fact that Gram is dead. For the past six days, I've been saying that "my grandmother died," which seems to be a very active verb. She died. It sounds like the action was done by her, she was still in charge. But now, I have to face the fact that she's dead. So passive and so permanent. I won't see her again in this life. I won't get to see her clueless smile when you talk to her because she never put her hearing aids in, but she knew you were talking, so she would smile and nod. I'll never have to get her purse again so she can put her perscription sunglasses on to read cards or newspapers. I'll never hug what turned into a frail little shoulder. We just have the memory of these things to hold on to.

Class starts tomorrow night (I had it tonight too but am skipping it) so updates may be more infrequent. Take care and hug your grandmother!

The aftermath

Yesterday the Casey family congregated in the critical care unit at Montgomery Hospital in the early afternoon. After a final meeting with the doctor, it was decided that they would take the tube out when all Gram's kids were there; we were just waiting for Uncle Michael to get there from York.

Taking the tube out was a very emotional moment; luckily, it was not as traumatic as it could have been as the actual process of removal just appeared to be a large cough from her. Since the nurses had told us that during tests to see if she could breath without the ventilator, she had not lasted longer than 30 seconds before needing it again, we all felt that it would be a short watch as we waited for her last breaths.

Approximately 18 hours later, she took them and passed on at 9 a.m. this morning.

True to her stubborn Dougherty roots, she continued to breath all through the afternoon and night while her children waited with her, telling her that it was OK for her to leave them. The doctors assured them she was comfortable.

Today we spent the day at the house with Pop, just spending time together as a family while her kids took care of the necessary, but difficult, arrangements for her funeral. It will be Wednesday at Mother of Divine Providence Church in King of Prussia. Any donations are asked to be made to Padre Pio in her name.

I will be saying a few words in a eulogy on Wednesday, so please pray for me to have the courage and grace to speak for our family. We spent today going through tons of photo albums to make collages for the church, and it was good preparation for those remarks. For many years, Pop was a photographer and his natural ability to capture emotion on film found its best subject in "Liz," as he lovingly referred to her even in their last time together. I hope I can do them justice.

Goodbye to Gram

It sounds like they'll be taking my grandmother off the ventilator sometime tomorrow. After the surgery, her heart rate never really got back up to where it needs to be, and the level that it's at is powered by medication. If she had a tracheotomy, she would end up going to a nursing home where she would most likely remain in the same state.

Although I've seen her more times in the past two weeks than I probably have in the past year, I went to go say goodbye this evening. She was in and out, would make eye contact and smile when you called out to her, but for the most part just lied there with her eyes closed, the ventilator inflating and deflating her chest. After that tough goodbye, I did what any self-respecting Casey would do -- got myself a large, thick, chocolate milkshake.

Whenever we were at my grandparents house as children, they would ask us if we wanted ice cream. Morning, noon and night, the time was always right for the Breyer's box to come out and be dished into small metal ice cream dishes that would get so cold as you steadied the stem on the table. Gram always made sure that, during a big family meal, when everyone was drinking after-dinner coffee and tea, that I had had a little tiny china cup and saucer from her china closet, mostly filled with milk and a generous helping of sugar. Even today when I pour a little too much of those ingredients in my tea, I feel like a girl at the kid's table again, clinking a tiny spoon against the fragile wall of the cup.

Even though we didn't have a close relationship as I grew up, Gram always loved things to be pretty and relaxing. She loved to have opera music playing, at home or their place at the shore. She loved the beach, even though Pop would rather be cutting the lawn and cleaning the house; he would drop her off and pick her up with her beach chair. She always seemed to be basking in the sun, but with some shade on her head, either a hat or a canopy, and a handful of delicate gold chains around her neck, sandollar charms and saints' medals resting on her chest. She was always decorating and "making [things] look nice," as my dad would say. I definitely see a little bit of this in all her kids, and in her grandchildren. They are the perfect blend of her desire for beauty and their father's penchant for neatness.

Saying goodbye to her was hard, but I know it is what she wanted. She would not want to lay in a small room with a machine living her for and miss the birds singing and the warmth of the sun on her skin. I told her she has to pray hard for us and help us to make everything pretty down here, without her.

Voici les nouvelles

Gotta work on les francaises, as we are going to see Les Miserables this weekend. (Kevin said he is going to be "tres miserables" if our excursion to NYC goes poorly. Don't you even laugh at that joke.) Of course, the play itself is not in French, but he and I were just saying that we had to read it in French for our high school classes and he does not recall any of it, so I was giving him the recap. Post-Pius, I got ambitious and asked for the Victor Hugo version for my own reading, but the sheer size of that tome totally intimidated me. I will conquer it someday.

Anyway, just wanted to post some news on our lives. School starts next week, so I am devouring my pleasure reading right now. I just finished Freedom Writer's Diary, on which the movie is based, which is very good and a quick read (great for potential teachers) and am now about a third of the way through The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory. I love historical fiction, and after my trip to the UK in my teens, I am fascinated by the English royal tales. She does a great job and I would encourage any of her Elizabethan-era books (I heard some of the others are not so great).

Our kitchen project is currently in a holding pattern due to some family trials. My dad's mom, Gram, has been very sick since the day after Christmas and in the hospital. We've had some scary moments where it seemed a foregone conclusion that she would pass on, she's been on a ventilator for the entire time and has recently had a colostomy. The doctor's are saying that she is fighting and there's a 50% chance she will pull through. She has had a lot of precarious health issues in the past few years. Send your prayers to her and my family that they may have peace and comfort, whatever the outcome.

Also, I have just endured my first day of physical therapy for what was diagnosed as bursitis in my left shoulder. I really can't pinpoint what the heck I did to incur the same affliction that inhibits AI, but I have been ordered to ice it up and have some PT. Today I learned basically some stretches and exercises that I have to do on my "off" days and I go back on Friday. I have been seriously lacking in my gym attendance as of late due to holiday craziness, so I was surprised when the therapist asked me if I worked out a lot. I said, "I try, but it's 2 times a week, if that." She said, "You have muscular arms!" I almost laughed out loud! I guess when you mostly see stooped old ladies with quad canes, even my lunch-lady flab looks like Arnold.

Jusqu'à la fois prochaine!

What's in a courtesy title?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet."
--From Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

In the frenzy of holiday visiting, we had the opportunity to hang out with a number of friends who now have children. Granted, these kids are all under the age of one and none of them are saying anything more than "da da," but it got me wondering how children should address friends of their parents. As some of these parents would hand a kid off to me, they would say, "Go see Aunt Jackie."

I'm sure that this will all come out in the wash, but the first time someone said that I was like, "whoa." I am not that baby's aunt! And it made me feel old! I still have yet to make up my mind, however; when I was young, I believe we called close friends of my parents "aunt" and "uncle," eventually dropping those titles as we got older and just using first names. I like the closeness that those titles connote, but does it detract from the uniqueness of actual aunts and uncles? I suppose I will grow used to whatever they end up calling me.

Some friends have asked, "Well, what do you want to be called?" We've thought of Ms. Jackie or Mrs. Jackie, but that seems a little Southern hospitality for my taste (not that it's bad, I'm just not a grits and biscuits kind of gal). I believe that our friends Joe and Erin refer to us as Jackie and Kevin in front of their daughter and I've never had a problem with that. But is that too informal? I've read various opinions on the subject, such as this one from the Washington Post. Many Internet posts indicate that the hybrid method (Ms. Jackie) is the way to go, citing the fact that some last names are just too hard to say for kids, it still has respect and eventually the title can be dropped as the child grows into adulthood. I'm not sure what my other alternatives are, as at this point in my life, "Mrs. Bonner" still sounds like my mother-in-law to me! However, I grew up with my friends all calling my mom Mrs. Casey and that still to this day sounds ok to my ear!

I was doing Internet research to look for some other creative alternative to these methods that would still connote respect, but failed to find any that weren't related to a particular ethnicity. If anyone has suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

More links:

Yes, m'am
Parenting: Call me Mr...
Berkeley Parents Network (remember this is the land of fruits and nuts :-)